Persons of Significant Control API - Incorrect company number returned?

API Issues
#1

Running a call to https://developer.companieshouse.gov.uk/api/docs/company/company_number/persons-with-significant-control/listPersonsWithSignificantControl.html#here with company number 00510607 I spot the following response:

 "name": "Diageo Plc",
      "identification": {
        "registration_number": "23307",
...

but that’s not right, is it? I can’t use the API to look up a company with number 23307 can I? Don’t I have to look up 00023307 ?

–tony

Persons of Significant Control - Controlled Companies
#2

It’d be nice if these were normalised but there are others like this. We’re just checking to try to gauge if indentification represents a UK registration then parsing these (adding zeros where appropriate) to complete company numbers.

Other examples:
In officer lists - company/01047315/officers

{
  "name": "EDINBURGH PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES LIMITED",
  "officer_role": "corporate-director",
  "identification": {
      "registration_number": "SC5534",
      ...
   },
   ...
},
{
  "name": "GLAXO GROUP LIMITED",
  "identification": {
    "registration_number": "305979",
    ...
  },
  ...
}
#3

Absolutely. One thing I find interesting is that within the officer search, the examples voracityemail listed are linked even though they have poorly formed registration numbers so it is possible to at least some extent and as such maybe we will see it for PSCs in the future. But it does raise questions about the reliability of those links.

With regards to responsibility for the validity of entries Service information makes it fairly clear the answer is “not us” as far as CH is concerned :slight_smile:

#4

Okay - so “my bad” on the sloppiness of my claim that the company number was “not right”.

But it raises a question about the character of the register in terms of who is responsible for managing the correct form or validity of the entries, and the extent to which they are linkable, even if only to other Companies House managed registers, such as the main company register…

#5

Well, that was clever. I somehow managed to edit and overwrite my previous post rather than adding a new reply.

#6

As per Ash’s comment I had guessed as much but hadn’t read the [service information][1]. Maybe the following quote should be the first thing visible on the developer site or listed at the top of each specification page!

The fact that the information has been placed on the public record
should not be taken to indicate that Companies House has verified or
validated it in any way.

Maybe getting information in json not XML should clue us that “anything may go”. On an optimistic note almost all data we’ve come across has sensible values - it’s there or it’s not returned (give or take a couple of suprising nulls).
[1]: Service information

#7

I thought that the matching for officers was done on name, birthdate (for people) and maybe bits of the address? For corporate officers it would make sense to use company number rather than birthdate, but I’ve no idea what method is actually used…